// HACKER NEWS — CYBERSECURITY
Why Target Common Lisp for Code Generation?
Unorthodox opinions on computer science and programming.
I’ve been asked twice now: if the generated code doesn't matter—if the AI is doing the heavy lifting of writing the syntax—why do I vibe code in Common Lisp?
Why not target Python, TypeScript, or Java? These are mainstream languages with massive training sets. The models can generate code in them with a high degree of statistical accuracy. So why do I choose to target a niche language like Common Lisp for code generation?
There are a lot of reasons, and they all come down to the same age-old question. Why use Lisp when you could use a more popular language? The answer is that language popularity is a poor proxy for utility and expressiveness. The Lisp community has long known this - it is why we chose Lisp in the first place. Selecting for popularity is what middle managers do to ensure that they can always find a warm body to maintain the code. It is not what elite hackers do.
You don't give an elite hacker a code monkey language. I want my AI to be an elite hacker, not simply a code monkey. If I expect my AI to work at an elite level, I should give it elite tools, not a code monkey language.
please see github.com/gornskew/skewed-emacs for generating CL with LLM agents.